UK Needs to Rebalance Powers of Government to Improve its Democracy

Powers of government are traditionally listed as:

• Legislative power - makes laws, holds executive to account
• Executive power - forms and implements policy in the shape of regulation and standards, enforces the law, operates the defence of the country, maintains and operates other public services, administers the country's finances etc.
• Judicial power - interprets the law, makes law by interpretation, applies the law through judging civil and criminal cases brought before judges in courts or similar venues

The functions above are simplified - for more detail use a search engine or a library.

In various places and at various times in history, governmental authorities have exercised these powers with a greater or less degree of separation. Depending on the degree of separation and exact nature of the implementation of institutions enshrining these powers, the interests of the powerful elites versus the interests of the remainder of the people have been balanced differently.

Depending on the the degree of separation, and balance of powers, the more or less tyrannical the government.  The more tyrannical the government, history shows the worse are outcomes for society as a whole in terms of geopolitical, social and economic risk and the worse outcomes are for individuals not in or protected by the elite.   

In absolute monarchies or other forms of absolute dictatorship, these powers are held by the monarch or dictator.  There is no representation of the people and no effective counter to the power of the monarch or dictator.  The application of the law is done at the effective whim of the monarch or dictator.  Given the attractiveness of power to people exhibiting high degrees of selfishness, propensity to cruelty and brutality, the outcomes for people outside of the elite supporting and influencing the monarch or dictator are poor and the overall wealth generating capacity of society is very limited as any surplus produced is generally expropriated and consumed by the elite rather than being reinvested in the economy in the form of physical, intellectual and human capital.

In more mature and democratic societies, the powers are separated and enshrined in more or less independent institutions. The degree of power separation and independence of the institutions in which powers are enshrined correlates with the degree of democracy attributable to the society in question. 

In representative democracies, the legislature is elected by the people on a regular basis.  The members so elected are mandated to represent the interests of the people who elected them. The degree to which this representation of the interests of the people is effective depends on the power of the legislature versus the power of the executive.  Recent experience in the UK has shown very clearly that the balance of power is very much in favour of the executive which is free to act in its own interest rather than the interests of the people as represented by the legislature.  This is most obviously manifest in the power of the executive to determine the business put before parliament and to decide if votes are binding on the executive.

In the UK parliament performs the functions of the legislative branch and holds the executive (the government) to account.

I suggest parliament gets to set its own agenda and and it gets to determine whether votes (all votes) are binding on the executive.  Further, it should get to approve senior executive appointments and be able to prosecute those appointees if they transgress the limits of their power.  Those limits need to be more clearly defined.

I think a big part of the problem is that a kind of fusion of powers has arisen over the last 300 or so years.  Instead of a clear and formal separation, powers were transmitted from the executive to the legislative branch as a way of limiting the power of the monarch.  This lead to the evolution of the role and office of prime minister.  This is now a de facto presidential role combining most of the powers of the monarch (old-time chief executive) with a very high degree of control of parliament (the legislative branch of government).  This contrasts sharply with how the United States of America resolved the same problem.  As far as I know, there, the executive branch is if anything the weakest of the 3 branches - and deliberately so it seems.